Category Archives: eplanks

For the first time in my teaching history, school was cancelled due to impending dangers – high fire risk due to strong winds. It was Monday afternoon, and my double virtual classroom session in elluminate, Ping, with Ajax and the cellist, Rohan from the Melbourne Symphony orchestra had just completed the session. Each week, we logon on quicker, have fewer technical issues etc. Students are becoming accustomed to the routine. Rohan was a particularly vibrant demonstrator with a great sense of humour. I started to hear noise, and realised a student was humming along with the compostition he was playing. The demonstration session was nearly finished when our principal walked in with a wad of yellow printed forms.

He quietly told me that this was a vital document, to be given to each student and that students MUST take it home and give to their parents, as there was no school tomorrow and possibly the next day. Students had their headphones on so did not hear those instructions. Joseph, our artist in residence, outlined to the students the practical element at the end of the first session. The bell rang and rather than disturb the class now, students continued on. Ten minutes into the lesson, an announcement asked for any students who had not been given a yellow form to come immediately to the office. 28 year 7 students proceed to go out the door, so I stopped them and gave them the sheet. Well, that did upset the class – or should I say, made them extremely happy. After 10 mins of settling them, they finally went back to composing their musical stories.

One boy came to me with his mobile phone and said he had just received a message from the police about high fire dangers! I had not heard of that either and asked how he got that, but he could not answer that either. Due to the late notification, there was no opportunity to catch up with my senior students to give them work to do at home.

Fierce duststorms

Today started out quite pleasantly and in fact some light rain had fallen, but by mid morning, the wind picked up and blew gales around 100km/hour. Dust blew, trees fell down in our driveway and outdoor furniture started to fly. My mother in law who is 89 years old has never seen such dust storms in her life. I had mulched my garden with newspaper and straw to keep the weeds down but that blew everywhere. See the movie clip of how it looked at home. By mid afternoon a fire had broken out 10 mins down the road, so our local fire tanker was called to fight the fire. Many trucks turned up and it was put out fairly quickly.

So….. today, a day of no school was to be a catch up day or so I thought. First I checked out twitter, which is blocked at school and read this tweet

ffoxworth@murcha Glad you’re getting rain! Our school was closed today because it was supposed to snow, but it never did!

Then I noticed another tweet inviting interest persons to test out tiny chat. So, an interesting discussion ensued with American teachers as to how this could be used in the classroom.

However, as I was online for a good part of the day, I received skpye calls and chats from my global colleagues. Jeff Whipple was one, enquiring whether our school would be interested in participating in the 1001 tales for either the elementary of middle school. The amazing part is that grade 5 classes in Qatar need partners. So, when I enquired further, I discovered that I had stayed with one of the teachers when at the flatclassroom conference and had met the other. It certainly is becoming a flat world. So finding our literacy teacher online, I asked whether she would be interested in being involved and she has agreed. Last year I organized it and was the contact person but as I do not teach primary year levels this year, the ownership is much better going to the classroom teacher.

In the afternoon, I settled down to catch up on emails etc, when I started to find my students emailing me, leaving comments on the ning and g-talking to me, wondering what they needed to do as they were missing out on class time at school. So, school was on after all. This is the fantastic nature of web2.0 tools, connectedness and an online environment. School can be 24/7/365.

After months of involvement, preparation and communications, three students and I have finally arrived in Doha, Qatar. It has already been an amazing venture and we have only been here for 5 hours or so. Let me share some of our experiences through our senses.

I see….

Kuala Lumpur aiport at night time, where we had to be ferried by a train across the tarmac to the main airport terminal

The Hawkesdale College contingent asleep on the couches, for a hour or so, during a 5 hour stopover.

Our first glimpse of Qatar, through the dark of the early morning arrival.

Queues at the immigration desk to allow us entry to the country.

Taxi and limousine touts all wanting to take us to the education centre of Qatar

The beautiful white buildings of Qatar, and the never ending building sites, with numerous cranes rising above the city horizon.

The magnificent corniche, or water frontage, complete with wooden boats and modern ships

Below follows a list of some sites that will allow teachers and educationalists to make connections for further collaboration including videoconferencing and global projects. It has been my experience that blogging and/or global project partners often make great videoconference partners as there is an already established element of trust and confidence in each other. The students have already got to know each other and this gives an element of richness to the learning outcomes. However, many of the schools we have videoconferenced with, were new and some of the sites that were used are listed below. There are many websites and ning groups now and an online search will produce many more results. Timezone and language differences often prove to be challenges/barriers. Read “using skype in education ” for further information on successful skype linkups.

In 2008, these were some of the sites that were used for connecting to the globe:-

Classroom2.0 – with a membership list of over 17000, this is the first recommended stop. “Long distance collaborations” and “e-learning and online teaching” groups are already established where valuable contacts can be made. Join the groups and watch out for the updates for these groups. New or established forums often appeal for connections for global projects and videoconferencing. A valuable contact for us came from a forum on classroom2.0 which actually put our school on Russian TV with our linkups to the Russian school!!

Today bore witness to the start of a virtual or web2.0 school. Jess McCulloch and I had teacher professional leave this year to lay the eplanks in web2.0 or virtual school. This would have to be one of the highlights of this project.

My valuable contact from Boston, Lorraine Leo connected us to Jean Pennycook, living in a tent, in Antarctica for a webcast. To ensure all went well, a backup date and time had been pre-arranged. Our primary teachers, (now there was a real purpose to use virtual classroom software, discoverE) rather nervously entered the virtual classroom yesterday to test the sound and gain confidence in the use of the classroom. Three year 9 girls acted as the technicians (students became experts) and supported the staff. This procedure went well and full credit to the staff for their quick acceptance of this software as they had not been exposed to it before. It was agreed for management purposes that most classes remain in their own rooms and log on as their class name. However, prep/one/two were combined and the secondary students were combined in the library (years7-9)

This morning we held an early recess and logged everyone on to their discoverE classrooms. One staff member who was absent yesterday was required to respond to Lorraine in Boston but came to me and said she had no idea how to talk or chat to her. Imagaine my surprise when at recess we were testing the sound with Lorraine and this teacher took over with utter confidence and performed the tests. After some internal gliches, we were so pleased to hear Jean Pennycook online with perfect audio transmission. Jean talked about the penguins and her research with them. Lorraine and Jean had prepared a presentation of slides with some wonderful photos.

Reflecting back, the eplanks of a virtual school were in evidence by the following factors:-

students as experts (year 9 girls became the experts on sound checks, software management etc and worked with Lorraine in Boston)

teachers from Taiwan, Adelaide, Sth America, USA were in the classroom (global teachers)

several students were in their homes in the USA listening and particpating (global students)

Geoff the software developer from Perth was in there (virtual team involving all aspects of the linkup)

every class and student at Hawkesdale P12 College from 5 year olds through to 15 year olds – a broad age group whom Jean managed to keep captivated for more than 1 hour (virtual school)

the vast majority of our staff (including those who were not timetabled for this timeslot) were in one of the virtual classrooms.

each class was a virtual classroom with teachers confidently managing audio and chat questions.

The chat moved furiously and fast with lots of questions from all year levels. Time was allowed for our students and the global students to ask questions using the microphone.

Jean allowed self directed student learning to occur, in that she paused to answer the student questions, rather than always speak to the slides. The students had some great questions that not only related to the penguins but to her life and experiences in Antarctica etc (student directed learning)

Parents came in to our classrooms and also listened to the webcast (parents as partnerships).

A huge thank you to all concerned for this wonderful 21st century educational experience.

About Me

G'day! I am a secondary teacher in a small rural prep to year 12 school in Australia. I teach Information Technology and Accounting and am passionate about learning, immersing technology in the classroom, rural education and global education.
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